Recently we had someone over and as the night came to a close Angel warmly offered, “Let’s do this again soon!” I wilted as I processed just how many things were on our calendar in the coming month. Just like Angel did, I wanted to be with them again and soon, but her invitation made me flinch.
My wife Angel and I are very different people. Angel brings light and life everywhere. People are drawn to her, and she is drawn to people. One of the many things I love about Angel is how she gets caught up in a moment with people. In that space, it’s not unusual that she shares hopes with those we are with of spending more time together. And she means it: there is no doubt of her genuineness.
“I don’t compare myself with anybody, but nobody is better.” Michael Jordan
“They say the sky’s the limit, but I think my potential is beyond it.” Jay-Z
“I won’t be happy until I’m as famous as God” Madonna
“I won’t be a rock star. I will be a legend.” Freddie Mercury
“We’re more popular than Jesus now.” John Lennon
We tend to expect that greatest among us are also some of the most arrogant. And why wouldn’t they be? For many who make it to the top of their field, we can see how that arrogance can be a driving force for their greatness.
God became flesh.
Let that sink in. Christianity asserts that God—sovereign, immutable, omnipotent, other—the eternal God who has no beginning and end—became a human being.
Because many of us have had exposure to Christianity from our early years, it is easy to miss how massive the theological implications of the incarnation are. The incarnation lays the groundwork for a God who chooses to participate in his creation. The incarnation denies the existence of an abstract and distant God, unmuddied by his handiwork.
“God did not, as the Bible says, create man in his own image; on the contrary, man created God in his own image.” Ludwig Feuerbach dropped this theological bombshell three years before Friedrich Nietzsche’s birth. Feuerbach, a name forgotten by most, but who influenced Nietzsche, wrote these words in his book, The Essence of Christianity (1841). He argued that human beings project their own attributes and desires onto an imagined deity, creating God in their own image. This for Feuerbach, is the essence of Christianity (and indeed all religions), the deification of our human ideals. “What man wishes to be, he makes his God… God is the outward projection of a man’s inward nature.”
We Westerners avoid death.
When was the last time you walked through a cemetery? When was the last funeral you went to? Our churches no longer have cemeteries, those who are older head to retirement communities and then to head to long-term care or assisted care facilities. The number of funerals held in churches has diminished. Death has become professionalized, antisepticised, and remote.
“I want to forgive him, but how do I forgive someone who died years ago?”
“I want to forgive her, but I don’t have any way to contact her.”
Do you have someone in your life that you want to forgive, but you don’t know how to because they are no longer in your life or perhaps they have passed away? This topic has come up a number of times in counseling others. May I offer some advice?
“It’s too late to apologize,” Timbaland sang to his girlfriend who he couldn’t trust any longer.
The 2007 song struck a chord. How many of us have people in our lives that we can’t imagine forgiving? How many of us have people in our lives we can’t imagine apologizing to? We can’t imagine apologizing to them, because of that, or right now. Better to just try to make it up, or smooth it over, we tell ourselves.
“It’s too late to apologize.”
We live in an apology-averse culture. We are allergic to repentance and equally allergic to forgiveness.
Think about it. When was the last time someone repented to you? I mean, truly repented?
Not long ago a congregant apologized to me. The email began this way (I’ve tweaked it only to protect the one who sent it), “I might have been a little harsh in my email.. I had a very bad week…” In further communication, the individual referenced their apology. Internally I scratched my head. “When did they apologize?” I dug back through the email thread and saw those phrases. That is what they were referencing.
“I might have…” followed by an excuse is no apology.
I don’t say that to attack the individual I am referencing. In fact, I completely understand why, given the slipperiness of our hearts, and in our culture, they would think that they had apologized.
We live in an apology-averse culture.
We are allergic to repentance and equally allergic to forgiveness.
Think about it? When was the last time someone repented to you? I mean, truly repented?
The last time a congregant apologized to me, the email began this way (I’ve tweaked it only to protect the one who sent it), “I might have been a little harsh in my email.. I had a very bad week…” In further communication, the individual referenced their apology. Internally I scratched my head. “When did they apologize?” I dug back through the email thread and saw those phrases. That is what they were referencing.
“I might have…” followed by an excuse is no apology.
I don’t say that to attack the individual I am referencing. In fact, I completely understand why, in our culture, they would think that they had apologized.
In our culture, we learn to apologize with phrases that look like this:
· “Sorry.”
· “I’m sorry if I hurt you.”
· “I know I shouldn’t have done that, but you shouldn’t have…”
· “I wouldn’t have done that if…”
· “That wasn’t my best.”
None of those are apologies.
By not learning how to apologize, we miss out on good’s purposes for our hearts and for the possibility of true reconciliation.
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